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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring 1960)


Profound changes have taken place during the past few years in the underlying economic relations between the United States and the rest of the world. Some of these changes have occurred only gradually, but in 1958 and 1959 their cumulative force plunged the United States balance of payments very abruptly into large deficits of $3.4 and $3.7 billion, respectively. New policies and new institutions are now being devised to cope with this altered situation, and they may well be setting patterns that the non-communist world will follow during the decades of the 1960s.

This surprising demeaning of great poets suggests that Bacon did not really admire stories about the gods. What he really admired was the first things, the things that the stories somehow imitate, the things that correspond with the things we know from sacred literature. In other words, the imitation of the gods must point to the gods themselves. If so, it is legitimate to substitute for the sequence "first things, fables, historical things" the more profound sequence "divine things, fables, human things."

To the orthodox the principle of "peaceful coexistence" means essentially not much more than the idea that the capitalist and communist worlds can exist side by side--in other words, the giving up, for the time being at least, of the principle of world revolution by Soviet intervention. The Yugoslavs, on the other hand, in obvious correspondence with their own present interests and actual practice, insist that peaceful coexistence must be active; in the interests of peace the socialist and the capitalist countries must actively cooperate and trade with each other, and even learn from each other, regardless of different social systems.

Since the communists are realizing that the Asian-oriented socialists are their chief competitor in underdeveloped countries, the relations between the two are becoming seriously strained. This development is bound to eventuate in open and bitter hostility, as it has in the Western democracies. The communists' hoped that they could win over the Easterners, and the fact that Asian neutralism favored them, were what led the communists to cater to the Asian socialists. Now that this latter group is assuming a critical attitude, growing into hostility, with its neutralism rendering more of a disservice than a benefit, the communists are turning on the Asian socialists as they have on other movements that they failed either to direct or to control.

Imperialism may be called the process of founding an empire beyond the nation's natural frontiers, with the aim of subjecting the population outside these frontiers to the political rule of the dominating country and to economic "exploitation." The first examples are probably the Assyrian empire in northern Mesopotamia around 1000 B.C., the Persian empire, founded in the sixth century, the Athenian "hegemony" from the middle of the fifth century to its collapse in the Peloponnesian Wars, and the Roman 'empire' during the later time of the Roman republic. Imperialism of this type is distinguished from subjection of the native population by immigrating tribes or military bands, which is the most pronounced form of what A. Rustow has called Uberlangernung.

The farm mechanization program of Turkey started ten years ago. Although the program has lost much of its initial momentum, it still continues to affect and change the country's social structure. This mechanization was the turning point in the rural history of Turkey, and provides the basis for future large-scale social-political developments. Despite its importance, however, few studies based on field observation have ever been undertaken to determine the effects of mechanization in the villages. The present article is an attempt to partially fill this gap, and is devoted to the study of twenty villages in the Antalya province, which are among the most beneficially affected by farm mechanization.

In this journal Professor Leland B. Yeager has set forth the case for a system of freely fluctuating exchange rates in the European Common Market. A strong argument can indeed be made for such a system. The elimination of all trade and payments restrictions within a customs union places major reliance on domestic adjustments for bringing about equilibrium in the external balance of payments. Since most countries are reluctant to subject their domestic economies to strains originating in their external position (and since, even if they were willling, the rigidities in the system would prevent downward cost-price adjustments), partial reliance on exchange adjustments would appear highly desirable.

Review of book by Albert O. Hirschman. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1958. 217 pp.

Review of book by Hans J. Morgenthau. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1958. 389 pp.

Review of book by Joseph M. Becker. New York: Columbia University Press. 1959. 501 pp.

Review of book by Leonard R. Sayles. New York: John Wiley. 1958. 182 pp.

Review of book by R. L. Bruckberger. New York: Viking. 1959. 277 pp.

Review of book edited by T. B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel. London: Watts. 1956. 268 pp.

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